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A PRESENT-DAY DEFINITION 
OF CHRISTIANITY 



A PRESENT-DAY DEFINITION 
OF CHRISTIANITY 



BY 

LAURA Hf WILD 

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL HISTORY AND LITERATURE 
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE 



NEW YORK 

THE WOMANS PRESS 
1920 






nH 



Copyright, 1920, by 

The National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations 

OF THE United States of America 



m -8 1920 

©CI,A601506 



AD 



CONTENTS 

Foreword ..... 
I. The Purpose of This Discussion 
II. What Is Christianity? . 

III. What Is It To Be a Christian? 

IV. What Is Evangelical Christianity? 



PAGE 

7 
9 

19 
31 
48 



1 



I 



FOREWORD 

^^How can Christianity be defined in pres- 
ent-day terms?" is not a new question; in each 
generation it has been asked by thousands of 
searchers after truth as well as by the skeptical 
and antagonistic. But to-day it comes to us 
with new insistence. The last five years have 
brought about tremendous changes in reli- 
gious thought. Our thinking is confused at 
the very time when we are face to face with 
the realities of a world to be rebuilt. The 
Christianity to be expressed for the new age 
must be a Christianity which will meet un- 
precedented human needs. 

Miss Wild's discussion squarely faces this 
situation. She recognizes especially the need 
of a reinterpretation of evangelical Christian- 
ity for the young men and women of the stu- 
dent class, who cannot be held by an outworn 



8 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

phraseology. But she also bridges the gap 
between this younger group and the men and 
women bearing the brunt of our modern life 
who are still at home in the terminology of a 
few years ago. 

The discussion strikes at the root of the 
matter; it goes back to the source of Christian 
thought and expression, to Jesus Christ Him- 
self, and applies his own attitude towards reli- 
gious truth to our need for an interpretation 
of Christianity belonging peculiarly to our 
own age. Miss Wild claims that the need for 
new translations of the Bible throughout the 
centuries is paralleled by a need for a ^'modern 
translation of dogma" which shall make clear 
the way to solving present problems between 
man and man, class and class, nation and na- 
tion. The writer has therefore rendered great 
service not only to clearer thinking, but also 
to nobler living. 

Mary E. Woolley, 
President, Mount Holyoke College. 



I 



THE PURPOSE OF THIS 
DISCUSSION 

We are to-day passing through a transition 
from one set of ideas to another, not only in 
politics, commerce and social relationships, 
but in religion. Rather, let us say, the expres- 
sion of our ideas is now crystallizing into 
something quite different from what it has 
been in the past, for the process of change 
has been going on a long time. We are now 
becoming conscious of what has occurred 
and of the necessity of making our language 
square with our ideas. 

The ideas themselves are not altogether 
new. It is our awakened consciousness of 
these ideas which is the new thing, and the 
fact that many of us are discovering vital 
truths that are new to us, although it may be 



lo PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

that the world has held them in some form or 
another for centuries. This is the same thing 
to us as if the ideas were wholly original. We 
often feel in our elation over such a find that 
new expressions are absolutely demanded and 
that the old ones should be thrown into the 
scrap heap. We feel that new wine demands 
fresh wine skins, and that there is absolutely 
no use in patching up an old outworn garment 
with our new cloth. It is not economical. It 
wastes both the cloth and our temper, and 
the time we spend on it could be spent on some 
new discoveries yet to be. 

We have gone further than this, if we may 
judge, for example, by the attitude of many of 
our college students. So far as religious ex- 
pressions are concerned, our training has been 
such that we do not ourselves even know the 
meaning of many of the old phrases. We 
have heard the words, but they have seemed to 
us to belong to another sphere from ours and 
we have been so busy with what were to us 
more important things that we have not had 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY ii 

the intellectual curiosity to inquire whether 
such phrases ever did hold a vital content of 
meaning. Those of us who have been very 
carefully brought up in orthodox religious 
homes have had explanations given us, but, 
after all, religious phraseology seems even to 
this comparatively small circle something like 
the Old English of Chaucer, not the style we 
use to-day in table conversation or in labora- 
tory work. And ideas that are vital come to us 
in language that is modern. 

More than once I have had students half- 
way through college come to me privately to 
know the meaning of the phrase, ^^Holy 
Ghost," and I have no doubt many more 
would have asked had they been honest with 
their ignorance. All honor to the few who 
wished to clear up their vagueness and sing 
the doxology intelligently! Other students 
have said that ^^the Trinity" meant nothing 
whatever to them as a concept, and yet these 
same students sing daily in our chapel serv- 
ices Reginald Heber's beautiful hymn. 



12 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

''Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, 
God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity." 
Others who have attended a service where the 
''Apostles' Creed" was repeated have felt that 
it was a kind of shibboleth, to the orthodox a 
necessary password, but to them totally with- 
out meaning in so far as real living is con- 
cerned. The initiated may understand it, but 
college students do not care to waste their 
time examining into such an historic docu- 
ment when life is so full of interesting ques- 
tions, which they cannot begin to compass in 
four short years. 

This feeling of unreality in religious 
phraseology does not seem to be confined to 
students. There were recently some enlight- 
ening statements in an article in The Atlantic 
Monthly upon "The Church and the Civilian 
Young Man,"* by one who had served as a 
chaplain in the army, who said that he made 
"a cool, calm synthesis of some thousands of 

* The Atlantic Afd?;7/^i(y, September, 1919, Rev. Bernard Iddings 
Bell. 



I 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 13 

careful observations of men." One of his itali- 
cized summaries runs thus: ^^The churches 
ought to recognize that they have never 
gained the interest and the enthusiasm of 
eight out of ten of the generation just coming 
to maturity. As far as vital motivations go, 
these fellows are not Christians at all, but 
merely more or less decent young pagans." 
Again he says, "If we are not to continue to 
lose young men, we must return to the teach- 
ing, in concrete, definite terms, of the essence 
of Christianity." 

Paganism, then, is to be deplored and 
Christianity is to be sought after. But the 
expressions that church people are using in 
the attempt to convey their ideas of Christian- 
ity seem much less real to youth than the 
phraseology of paganism. Is the fault with 
Christianity or with the terminology? Are not 
the children of this world wiser than the chil- 
dren of light? Our commercial leaders have 
scored American stupidity for not presenting 
American goods to the people of China and 



14 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

South America in a form that they liked. 
Other nations, before the war, seized the trade 
we might have had because they were astute 
enough to manufacture their articles to suit 
the taste of their customers instead of offering 
them the identical shapes used at home. We 
are mending our ways commercially, pos- 
sibly politically. Are we mending them 
religiously? 

There are two ideas of the function of a 
college : one is that it is a repository of knowl- 
edge; the other that it should offer an educa- 
tive training. The one says to youth : If you 
want an education, come and get it; if you are 
intellectually alert here you may satisfy your 
longings. Take it or leave it. Our supply of 
food is offered you on the cafeteria plan ; pick 
up your tray, your plate and knife and fork, 
and come to our respective counters of beef 
and dessert and you will find all you can wish. 
But the other meets youth at the door, seats 
him at a table, studies his face to read his likes 
and dislikes, offers tempting suggestions, and 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 15 

is much disturbed for his welfare and the wel- 
fare of society if he eats nothing. One is espe- 
cially concerned with knowledge, the other 
with the youth. Both demand expert cooks. 

Possibly the church, good as her cooks have 
been, has been especially concerned with her- 
self as a repository of churchly phraseology, 
ideas cooked according to standard recipes, 
and not enough concerned with whether the 
food prepared looked palatable to youth, or 
whether the youth would turn to the place 
across the way to satisfy his appetite. 

The church has been just as sure of its 
riches as the college has of its wealth of 
knowledge. It has not been able to compre- 
hend why it was necessary to change its ex- 
pression of truth when truth expressed in 
certain forms has meant so much to past gen- 
erations. But such is the perversity of life : it 
changes; nothing stands still if it is alive. 
Even plants and animals that seem to a casual 
observer to be stable as to genus and form, and 
indeed the very rocks themselves, in the course 



i6 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

of long periods of time, do change. The 
Psalmist of old said, ^^I will look up unto the 
mountains," as if in their towering grandeur 
they could supply that element of stability his 
soul so much needed, but in the very next 
line he corrected himself and added, "From 
whence cometh my strength? My strength 
Cometh from the Lord who made heaven and 
earth," and explains that his reason for such 
confidence is not that the forms of God's most 
enduring creations do not change, but because 
God Himself neither slumbers nor sleeps but 
is watching man day and night as his feet 
tread the path of his pilgrim journey. 

Are we not, then, justified in trying to ex- 
plain to the youth of to-day some of our funda- 
mental beliefs as Christians, in terminology 
that has a meaning for them in this time of 
transition, and of consciousness of growing 
pains? The object of this book is to try to 
interpret in the simplest possible language a 
term much used but very vaguely understood 
by the great majority of young people, evan- 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 17 

gelical Christianity. This object includes the 
desire to interpret that term as Jesus would, 
not as enthusiasts for ecclesiastical interpre- 
tations would consider fitting, but as our Lord 
Himself would wish his young disciples to 
understand it. This, of course, necessarily 
involves the personal equation; anyone at- 
tempting to do such a thing has arrived at his 
conclusions by his own path, but it is based 
upon an honest attempt to study the meaning 
of the phrase historically and to study Jesus' 
teachings sympathetically. 

In order to arrive at our goal of a definition 
of evangelical Christianity which Jesus would 
sanction to-day, we need to clear the way by 
being quite sure we understand each other 
when we use the terms Christianity and being 
a Christian. These three questions seem to be 
focal points in the minds of young people to- 
day when they are thinking about religion: 
What is this something about which we are 
talking all the time, called Christianity? 
What is it to be a Christian in this day when 



1 8 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

it is not safe or lovely to draw hard and 
fast lines? What is evangelical Christianity, 
which so many good people warn us we must 
embrace if we are to please the Lord Jesus? 



II 

WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? 

When a student comes across a term which 
he does not understand, if he is a real student, 
he rushes to the dictionary to fortify himself. 
He also begins to make his own definition if 
his term refers to a matter of common obser- 
vation. He eliminates extraneous elements, 
watches this particular phenomenon in action, 
finds out what it does, probes into it to dis- 
cover the secret of its power, and finally 
emerges from his investigations with ideas 
that are real to him at any rate, even if he 
cannot explain them quite so accurately as the 
dictionary. The dictionary is a corrective 
and a spur to further investigation. 

Now this is the method we shall pursue in 
this brief attempt to arrive at an intelligible 



20 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

answer to our inquiry, What is Christianity? 
We will begin with some everyday questions 
about this phenomenon w^hich seems to be 
ever present in the life around us, which is re- 
ferred to, assumed as existing in our commu- 
nity life and yet is, after all, rather an elusive 
thing, at least hard to define offhand. 

Question No. I. What does the term Chris- 
tianity stand for in your community? For a set 
of doctrines that certain people hold who go 
to church? For certain rules of conduct that 
respectable citizens are supposed to obey? For 
a spirit that pervades your community life? If 
so, what is that spirit? Is it then partly Chris- 
tian and partly something else which we will 
for convenience call pagan? Would your 
home town resent the implications if a visitor 
should remark that it did not seem to know 
what Christianity meant in its politics or its 
business? Would it resent a placard posted 
at its entrance right next to the ones saying 
this is ^^The most desirable city for factory 
sites,'' or it is ^The city of homes," advertising 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 21 

that ^^This town does not understand the term 
Christianity"? If there would be an indigna- 
tion meeting over such exposure, why? Cant 
you formulate a definite answer in your own 
mind? 

Question No. 2. What do you think the 
term means to a foreigner from a non-Chris- 
tian land? Consider, for instance, a Chinese 
student sent to this country by his gov- 
ernment. Would he be surprised to find 
that in a Christian country a different set 
of regulations and expectations as to con- 
duct surrounds a state institution and a so- 
called Christian college? Would he become 
rather confused as to the meaning of the 
term Christianity, and if he should ask you 
for enlightenment, could you give it? Think 
of the Chinese student who has come from a 
missionary school. What kind of anticipa- 
tions do you think he has as his steamer ap- 
proaches the land that sent the missionaries to 
his pagan home? Does he get any shocks be- 
fore the year is out? Does he have the same 



22 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

idea of the meaning of Christianity when he 
graduates as when he came? Will he be 
sorry or glad at the change? The term must 
then have some definite content of meaning. 
What, in a nutshell, is that content? 

Question No. J, Take tuo individuals ivho 
seem to stand in a different relation to Chris- 
tianity because of their membership or non- 
membership in a Christian church. Would 
their definitions coincide? If not, why not? 
There must be some general definition which 
is true, whoever uses it. Is it possible to 
arrive at such a common definition that 
both church member and non-church member 
w^ould recognize it as true? Why is there 
any difficulty in such agreement? Which one 
is the more exacting? Which one is broader? 
Which one is the more likely to be right? 
Can you apply the test that will clear up such 
confusion? 

Question No. 4* ^^ Christianity the same 
as ecclesiasticism? In answering this ques- 
tion it is necessary to keep in mind the fact 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 23 

that our churchly observances are the product 
of the centuries, that there have been many 
accretions since the apostolic days, that v^hen 
Christianity passed through the hands of the 
Greeks, the Romans and the Teutons, many 
customs v^ere added not known to the He- 
brews. It must be remembered also that so 
far as creedal statements are concerned, they 
are the product of the Greek type of thinking, 
not of the Hebrew. The expression of faith 
in formal creeds was foreign to the Hebrew 
prophets and to Jesus. Not until we come to 
Paul do we have any approach to the philo- 
sophical or creedal manner of expressing 
truth, and Paul was evidently affected by the 
Greek environment of his early home. The 
question resolves itself, then, into this : Do the 
observances and creeds held by the church, no 
matter from what source they originated, 
Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon or 
even oriental, as some maintain, — do these ob- 
servances and creeds represent Christianity? 
Or is Christianity something that may be 



24 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

found imbedded in them but not necessarily 
truly represented by everything ecclesiastical? 

Question No. 5- Should Christianity be 
confined to the teachings of Jesus Christ and 
to the apostolic interpretation of his teachings 
to be found in the New Testament, or should 
we conceive that as men have pondered upon 
the germ of truth there revealed they have 
seen it in larger outline than was possible in 
apostolic days? In other words, is Christian- 
ity a much broader conception of truth than 
can be found in the Bible and are we to accept 
all the later enlargements and explanations as 
a genuine part of Christianity itself? 

There are two phases to this question. Did 
Jesus, called the Christ, after whom Christian- 
ity was named, plant in the world the germ of 
all truth afterwards to blossom out into Chris- 
tianity, so that later additions were simply 
new interpretations and not new or extraneous 
truth? Or is Christianity really a larger 
thing than Jesus Himself ever dreamed it 
would be? In other words, has man gone on 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 25 

building upon the truth of the New Testa- 
ment until now the New Testament cannot be 
expected to hold that truth? 

Question No. 6. Is Christianity, then, abso- 
lutely differentiated from all other faiths or 
has it absorbed many qualities found in pagan 
religions? If the latter is the case, how may 
one draw the line between pagan truth and 
Christian truth? If we say it is all God's 
truth wherever found, why do we apply to it 
this limited term, Christianity? Why not 
more truthfully call ourselves Syncretists 
rather than Christians? If, as it is accepted 
now, it stands for an occidental as against an 
oriental interpretation of truth, are we not 
very narrow, not to say intolerably conceited 
westerners, to affirm that this occidental reli- 
gion of ours is the only one worth holding? 
May there not be an oriental interpretation 
quite as true to the original germ-idea as the 
occidental phase of which we boast? Must 
we not, if we are fair-minded, make our faith 
cover much more than its historic origin 



26 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

would seem to warrant, and grant that the 
term itself has changed in its meaning as so 
many words in our English language have 
changed? 

Question No. J. Should we, then, confine 
the term Christianity to those people who are 
trying to follow Jesus' teachings or even who 
have come under their influence, as distinct 
from the teachings of Mohammed or Buddha? 
Or should we make an entirely new definition 
that will fit our own day better, standing for 
all that is best and most progressive every- 
where, all that grips anybody's soul, whoever 
he may be, or at any rate all that is construc- 
tive in building up character? 

Might not such be the questions which a 
visitor from another planet would ask us if he 
were trying to formulate a definition of Chris- 
tianity as he hears it talked about to-day? If 
we have carefully thought them through for 
ourselves it is time to go to the dictionary. 
And we shall find there a series of definitions 
which embrace nearly all the answers we 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 27 

could make. The Century Dictionary states 
them thus : 

I. The religion founded by Jesus Christ. 
This, of course, differentiates Christianity 
from the religions founded by Buddha, Mo- 
hammed or Confucius or any of the other 
great religious teachers. But it does not say 
it must have stayed as it was founded. In fact, 
there are three interpretations added, any one 
of which, it seems, is legitimate, (a) Histori- 
cal Christianity. This is limited to the facts 
and principles stated in the New Testament. 

(b) Dogmatic Christianity. This embraces 
systems of theological doctrine that have been 
built up through the centuries since Jesus 
lived or the New Testament was written. 

(c) Vital Christianity. This is defined as 
meaning the spirit manifested by Jesus in his 
life and which He commanded his followers 
to imitate. It is evident that a vital Christian 
may know very little about dogma, and even 
be ignorant of the composition of the gospels. 

The second definition given does not con- 



28 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

fine itself to the religion or the system of 
thought or the kind of spirit manifested, but 
reads thus: 

2. The body of Christian believers. In 
other words, it is the group of people who have 
embraced the religion. This is presumably 
synonymous with the Christian Church. But 
in actuality we know it is not; for there are 
many non-church members who bear the 
fruits of the Christian religion, and Jesus 
Himself said that it is by their fruits we 
should know them. 

The third definition swings out far wider 
than this, as if to include all the fruits that 
may have come from the planting of this 
religion. It reads : 

3. The Christian or civilized world, 
namely, Christendom. Now we know that 
in what we call the civilized world there are 
many customs and beliefs that cannot have 
had their origin in Jesus. This definition must 
then mean that part of the world that seems 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 29 

to have been leavened by his spirit, where his 
religion has been the predominant factor. 

But finally, there is given a definition of an 
entirely different import. It is not the reli- 
gion, or the church, or that part of society 
leavened by Jesus' teachings, but 

4. Conformity to the teachings of Christ 
in life and conduct. That is, Christianity is 
an act, not a philosophy of life or a group of 
people, but ethical conduct as measured by 
Jesus' example. 

In reviewing these definitions we seem to 
see that they all revolve about the thought, the 
spirit or the conduct set in motion by Jesus 
and his teachings. We may therefore sum up 
these definitions by some such statement as the 
following : Christianity embraces the thought, 
spirit and conduct traceable to Jesus' life and 
teachings. And this will square with our own 
observations as analyzed above, unless indeed 
we wish to ignore altogether history and his- 
torical derivations. If we do wish a term 
which will be broader than such a definition 



30 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

can give us for what we consider our most 
progressive and enlightened religious thought, 
should we not coin a new one, a truly syncre- 
tistic one, that will not be confused in the 
minds of the multitude with the historic asso- 
ciations with Jesus Christ? 

If, then, we are satisfied with this definition 
of Christianity, that it is the thought, spirit 
and conduct in the world traceable to Jesus' 
life and teachings, we are ready for our next 
inquiry: What is it to be a Christian? 



Ill 

WHAT IS IT TO BE A CHRISTIAN? 

One day before a college class of young 
women, I made what seemed to me a very 
axiomatic statement, that to be a Christian 
meant to be a follower of Jesus, and in order 
to be a follower of Jesus one needed to know 
what his teachings are. I found that there 
seemed to be objection to so drastic a require- 
ment of a Christian and I finally succeeded in 
eliciting the following criticism, that the ma- 
jority of people who are considered to be 
Christians are so thought of because they go 
to church, and are kind, and considerate of 
their neighbors, standing decidedly for re- 
spectability in their communities, and that 
this does not necessitate any study of the Scrip- 
tures or any conscious knowledge of the pre- 



32 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

cepts of Jesus. My answer was, that even 
though this might be so, such people were, 
even at best, only second- or third- or fourth- 
hand followers and that somewhere in the line 
there was someone who was making a con- 
scious effort to understand Jesus and his teach- 
ings and to pass on his spirit, that the truest 
followers were those caring enough about it 
to make a thoughtful attempt to be in har- 
mony with Him and that this involves very 
definite thinking and definite willing. 

To be a diluted Christian is no more satis- 
factory than to have milk and water in our 
cream pitcher for breakfast, nor does it make 
the blue milk cream just to call it so. At the 
same time one must remember that to be an 
artist at anything one must have learned the 
technique so well that it has become second 
nature and one does not need to stop to think 
of every movement of the hand or position of 
the foot. But no artist, whether he be pianist 
or tennis player, ceases to exert himself to 
play well. The figure of the game was a 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 33 

favorite one with Saint Paul and he charged 
the Christian to run so that he might attain, 
and said of himself as an example, ^^I there- 
fore so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as 
not beating the air." 

There is, then, something very definite 
about being a Christian. It is a game just as 
life is a game, and there are rules for it just 
as there are rules for playing the game of life. 
And the good player vv^ho knows the funda- 
mental rules so well that they are a part of his 
subconscious self, so that he does not have to 
waste time thinking about them, goes on to 
think very consciously of the skill he can em- 
ploy in applying the rules to better purpose. 
Is this not true of one who has learned the 
second great commandment? He may have 
ceased long since to go to Sunday-school and 
repeat it: it may be second nature to him to be 
polite to his next-door neighbor and thought- 
ful of his grandmother, but he is very con- 
sciously at work trying to think his way 
through the application of the principle of 



34 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

brotherly love in his business and in the 
knotty problems of capital and labor. 

And I take it that such a sincere effort to 
get at the truth of Jesus' principles involves 
an honest desire to let in upon them all the 
light possible. Does the parent say he will 
not send his child to any school because there 
are many schools and differently trained 
teachers and consequently different opinions 
about many subjects? Rather, he chooses 
what he thinks is the best and most up-to- 
date school and tells his child to learn all he 
can. Shall we be followers of the interpreta- 
tions of modern scholars or of interpretations 
evolved in the less enlightened days of church 
history? Or, on the other hand, shall we 
throw away all that sound scholarship has 
discovered in the past just because it bears an 
old-fashioned name? 

The scholar, whoever he may be, is marked 
primarily by an attitude of mind, and that 
attitude is one of earnest and honest search for 
the truth wherever it may be found. In so far 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 35 

as in us lies, every Christian should have this 
scholarly attitude of doing honest thinking 
and letting in the light, whether his training 
has come to him through books or through 
experience. Such an attitude would solve 
very speedily many of our creedal differences. 
They would simply be dissolved into thin air 
in the presence of the spirit of Jesus. Differ- 
ing theological dogmas have bothered the 
Christian very much in the past but they are 
giving place now to differing interpretations 
of Jesus' social principles. But whether it is 
the question of miracles and the second com- 
ing or of Christian democracy and the capi- 
talistic system, the attitude of mind of earnest 
desire to find the true path and to let in light 
is fundamental, for only so can we ever begin 
to find out what Jesus' teachings really are. 

There are, then, certain primary demands 
of the Christian. One of them is attention. 
This is an intellectual demand but it is not 
therefore simply for ^intellectuals." Many a 
student who goes to college and comes forth 



36 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

with a degree has not attended to the business 
of living any more consistently than the fac- 
tory worker who had to leave school before he 
was half ready. And many a professional 
person has put less clear thought upon living 
up to Jesus' teachings than the woman who 
does his laundry or cooks his meals. Many a 
speaker at the forums in our cities has been 
hard put to it to answer the thoughtful ques- 
tions of the laboring people, and sometimes 
such people, who have attended to the lessons 
of life, arrive with more unerring accuracy 
at the real gist of a question than one who has 
trained his mind in the arts of the schools. 
But attention is certainly necessary in being 
a good Christian, for it is a business as well as 
a game, and great success is not to be expected 
of either the subnormal or the superficial. 

A second demand is consecration or loyalty. 
One may define consecration as a whole- 
hearted giving of oneself to Jesus and his 
cause. This is the same as loyalty, and in 
order to be true to anything one must be loyal. 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 37 

The old-fashioned term, ^'conversion," 
means in the last analysis eliciting from an 
individual the declaration of his loyalty. In 
order to come to the point of such a declara- 
tion one must, of course, be convinced of the 
v^orthiness of the cause, that it is of such a 
degree of excellence that it is worth spending 
oneself for, that whatever it costs to stand by 
it, that cost is not too great. 

Now the most effective appeal of the pres- 
ent day seems to be far different from the ap- 
peals of the past that have won many adher- 
ents, that have ^'converted" many souls. It 
seems to the modern mind a more convincing 
thing to think of Jesus as the suffering brother 
come to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows 
in order to show us how much God really 
loves us, than to regard his death on the cross 
as a propitiation to an angry God. The work 
for Christian democracy, which is the key- 
note of the modern interpretation of Jesus' 
teachings, seems a much more worth-while 



38 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

effort than to exert oneself to get into the body 
of the elect. 

But whatever may have been the appeal of 
the past which was real for its day and which 
won whole-hearted consecration, and what- 
ever may be the vital appeal for to-day, which 
after all may be partial, as we look back upon 
it in the future, the one fundamental element 
common to all true Christian experience is 
loyalty. We may well call it Christian integ- 
rity. That this is absolutely essential to our 
belief in a Christian is proved by the way we 
trust a person who has it, notwithstanding mis- 
takes and failures, and we distrust one who 
has not shown it, despite beautifully worded 
prayers and outward conformity. When all 
is said and done, a good Christian is more to 
be preferred than a brilliant woman. 

Does such loyalty, such whole-hearted con- 
secration, denote fanaticism? Sometimes it 
does, we must confess, for to care for a cause 
very much means naturally that the weak, the 
slightly unbalanced, the limited folk, are car- 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 39 

ried too far in one direction or another, not 
in their loyalty, but in their conception of the 
truth of the cause. To be perfectly balanced 
and absolutely fair is a very difficult art, and 
possibly in the long run, overcautious persons 
see things less in true perspective than those 
who give themselves utterly to the winning of 
a score much needed just now. It may be that 
the sin of lack of judgment will be forgiven 
when the sin of lack of loyalty is fatal. Some- 
one has recently said, ^^At last perhaps the 
long disputed sin against the Holy Ghost has 
been found ; it may be the refusal to co-operate 
with the vital principle of betterment." A 
refusal to co-operate with anything but one's 
own selfish interests is certainly disloyalty to 
the Christian cause. 

The Lord's Supper is the memorial Jesus 
established in which we may unite as a sign of 
our loyalty to Him. And when the church 
gives the invitation to partake, as many 
churches now do, to all who love the Lord 
Jesus and wish to follow Him, it is an invita- 



40 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

tion on the basis of attention and consecration, 
not by any means on the assumption of a com- 
plete understanding of what Jesus teaches. 
Interest and devotion are assumed as the fun- 
damentals, for out of them will spring a dili- 
gent search to find the truth. And we cannot 
help but admire even those who have substi- 
tuted some other sign of loyalty than the ec- 
clesiastical rite of the Holy Communion, such, 
for instance, as a whole-hearted service of the 
Socialist cause, which to many seems extreme, 
if we find there an honest search for the truth 
at any cost to self. 

But right here an objection will be raised 
and someone will say. Is there nothing to dif- 
ferentiate loyalty to Christ from other loyal- 
ties? Attention and devotion are required of 
the followers of any cause or of any leader. 
How are these characteristics to distinguish 
a Christian from a Buddhist or a Moham- 
medan? The answer is that it is of course the 
teachings themselves and the spirit of the 
Teacher that make the difference and ripen 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 41 

the Christian character, so that one may tell a 
true Christian more and more certainly as he 
becomes like his Master. Paul clearly shows 
us this when he enumerates the fruits of the 
Spirit — love, joy, peace, longsuflfering, kind- 
ness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self- 
control. And it is without doubt some fruit 
of the Christian spirit, some great teaching 
that has gripped his mind and heart, which 
has proved the initial attraction to any disci- 
ple and won his attention and devotion. 

But this is far from saying that any true fol- 
lower or any group of true followers must 
have a complete knowledge of the meaning of 
those teachings or that any age has grasped 
the perfect interpretation. The wonderful 
thing about Jesus is that his truth seems to 
transcend human interpretations and local ap- 
plications and yet Jesus remains the same, the 
constant factor in our faith. In other words, 
we are believing in a Person with such a tran- 
scendent personality that we cannot confine 



42 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

our appreciation of Him within the limits of 
any dogma or to the expression of any age. 

Christian appreciation is a growing thing 
just as the Christian life is growing, dynamic, 
not static. And the very heart of our faith is 
in Jesus as a Spirit, a spiritual power, who 
must be worshipped in spirit if He is wor- 
shipped truly. And when spirit touches 
spirit neither rites, nor words, nor dogma can 
confine the flame; it bursts beyond such 
earthly bounds. This is the mystical side of 
Christian experience. Yet one may be a ra- 
tionalist by temperament, scarcely understand- 
ing the mystic's primer, and still be obliged to 
confess, if he has diligently attended to the 
matter, that Jesus' teachings go far beyond 
what the world has yet caught up with in its 
intelligence. 

Can one then be wholly Christian, even to- 
day in a so-called Christian land? If, for ex- 
ample, one is convinced that the fundamental 
teaching of Jesus is brotherly love, democracy 
in its truest sense, can one be a Christian in a 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 43 

country where the very fabric of society is 
woven on a different pattern? While we are 
trying to change the pattern we have to live. 
Must we not live, then, half as pagans and 
only half as Christians? Must we not com- 
promise in act when our spirit would move us 
otherwise? 

Are we to be revolutionists or evolutionists 
in our attempts to be Christian? It would 
seem from a careful study of Jesus' own life 
that He chose the latter method. Here lies 
the struggle. It is of the very essence of spirit- 
ual truth that it outstrips the flesh in every 
way. Our reach exceeds our grasp. We must 
confess that we cannot any of us be ideally 
Christian but that anyone may be a dynamic 
Christian, a vital Christian, if there is within 
him such a passion for his ideal that it is urg- 
ing him on to work and to live for it, in very 
truth letting his life be consumed by his love. 

Now this involves something which is very 
essential to a real Christian. We have said it 
already. Let us say it again in a more con- 



44 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

ventional way. It involves a deep prayer life. 
One's whole life becomes a prayer, an insist- 
ence that the vision shall become a reality, that 
the partial shall give way to the more com- 
plete, that wrong shall be displaced by right, 
that Jesus Himself shall come indeed and pos- 
sess men's hearts. There is behind one's life 
a great urge, the pressure of a compelling 
power that makes him yearn for higher things 
both for himself and the race, that makes him 
want to break his bonds, that keeps him always 
from self-complacency and self-satisfied con- 
tentment, that leads him in the end to build 
a bridge from the life of the flesh to the life of 
the spirit, from material levels to spiritual 
levels, from life in the body to life after death. 
The Christian is not seeking religion for its 
consolations, but being religious for its ulti- 
mate ends. 

Let us recapitulate. To be a Christian 
means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and this 
involves a conscious endeavor to get at the 
underlying truth of Jesus' teachings. The 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 45 

marks of such honest endeavor are attention, 
the application of one's mind, and devotion, 
the consecration of one's whole self. Such 
loyalty produces Christian integrity; such de- 
votion to the Great Teacher bears fruit in the 
understanding of his teachings and the birth 
within one's own soul of his spirit. But this 
does not mean that every true Christian agrees 
with every other one in his intellectual inter- 
pretation, which may vary as dogmas always 
vary. Neither does it mean that the inter- 
pretation of one age does not differ from the 
interpretation of another. It does mean that 
we are trying to harmonize our attitude of 
soul with the attitude of Jesus toward life and 
death, toward God and man, toward society 
and social salvation, and toward ourselves and 
our individual salvation. 

The fundamental thing is harmony of atti- 
tude in love and devotion, in self-surrender 
and loyalty, in humility and teachableness. 
This carries with it the application of our 
minds to the particular problems involved in 



46 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

life and death, in social relationships and in- 
dividual struggle and the honest intellectual 
statement of our convictions from time to 
time. 

It does not mean that we can be ideal Chris- 
tians at any time, but it does mean that the 
spirit of Jesus has touched our spirit in such 
a way that our eyes have been opened to see 
spiritual truth we had not seen before, that 
our hearts have been quickened to a whole- 
hearted devotion to that vision, that our wills 
have been nerved to action and that our lives 
have been given supremely to the service of 
our Master. It means that our lives have 
really become lives of prayer, of spiritual in- 
sistence, of the pressing of our soul onward 
and upward and outward to the attainment 
of the perfect harmony with the Spirit of 
Jesus and the Spirit of God. As Paul puts it: 
^'Not that I have already obtained, or am al- 
ready made perfect: but I press on, if so be 
that I may lay hold on that for which also I 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 47 

was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. ... I press 
on toward the goal unto the prize of the up- 
ward calling of God in Christ Jesus." 

Can anyone deny a place in the Christian 
fold to such a spirit? 



IV 

WHAT IS EVANGELICAL 
CHRISTIANITY? 

Having discussed what it really means to be 
a Christian, what is the need of saying any- 
thing further? Many people would think it 
useless and perhaps they are right. But just 
because many good people are using the 
phrase ^^evangelical Christianity" to denote 
the only right and true way to be a Christian, 
and because a great majority of young people 
do not understand at all what they are talking 
about, it is worth while to get our ideas clear 
as to terminology. This chapter is therefore 
a discussion of terminology, of the derivation 
of ideas. 

The word evangelical is the adjective form 
of the word evangel, which comes from two 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 49 

Greek words, evy meaning glad, and ayyikiovy 
meaning tidings or news. ^^Good news," then, 
is the evangel and an evangelical person 
would be one carrying this good news, or 
literally, ^^a good angel." That is a beautiful 
expression to apply to a Christian. Those of 
us who have had ^^good angels" in our lives 
know that they come the nearest to being the 
revelation of the divine that any merely hu- 
man being can attain. And we often wonder 
whence they derived their power, and their 
insight and their grace. But sad to say, the 
term evangelical as it is used to-day has not 
always a very close connection with our ^^good 
angels." It has become cut and dried; it has 
gone through the crucible of the creeds and 
seems to stand for some sort of a belief that a 
person must have if he is to be called ortho- 
dox. 

Let us have recourse to the dictionary once 
more. The Century Dictionary says, ^^Of or 
pertaining to the gospel of Jesus Christ." 
This seems to harmonize with the derivation 



so PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

of the word, for gospel is only the Anglo- 
Saxon for evangel, literally, ^'God's story," or 
the ^^good story," or good news. 

The second definition is only an elaboration 
of this. An evangelical person is one ^'con- 
formable to the requirements or principles of 
the gospel, especially as these are set forth in 
the New Testament," or one who is ^'charac- 
terized by or manifesting the spirit of Christ." 
This is precisely what we have been talking 
about in the last chapter. 

But the third brings in theological termi- 
nology wrought out by the church fathers. 
An evangelical person according to this defi- 
nition is one ^'adhering to the doctrine of the 
gospel; especially applied to a section in the 
Protestant churches who profess to base their 
principles on Scripture alone and who give 
distinctive prominence to such doctrines as 
the corruption of man's nature by the fall, 
atonement by the life, sufferings and death of 
Christ, justification by faith in Christ, the 
work of the Holy Spirit in conversion and 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 51 

sanctification, and the divine exercise of free 
and unmerited grace." The Standard Dic- 
tionary uses a little different phraseology — 
'^Holding to what the majority of Protestants 
regard as the fundamental doctrines of the 
gospel, such as personal union with Christ, 
the Trinity, the fallen condition of man, 
Christ's atonement for sin, salvation by faith, 
not by works, and regeneration by the Holy 
Spirit." 

Surely this sounds as if every evangelical 
Christian would need to be a theologian and 
moreover a theologian expressing himself in 
the terminology of the church of the past. 
For these are not the spontaneous expressions 
of the present, neither are they Jesus' words, 
they are creedal statements wrought out in 
ecclesiastical history when the fight was on 
between Luther and the Pope and farther 
back in the fourth century when Athanasius 
was declaring himself for the Trinity in the 
Nicene Creed against the heretic Arius. 

The truth of the matter is that very few 



52 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

members even of our so-called evangelical 
churches could discuss these doctrines with 
any intelligence to-day, and our ministers, hav- 
ing once gone through a course in the theolog- 
ical seminary and presumably passed with or 
without credit, spend very little time in the 
pulpit elucidating such doctrines. They 
seem to think it very much more important 
to dwell upon such basic New Testament 
teachings as love to God, union with Jesus 
Christ and his Spirit, and the brotherhood of 
man. No one can escape finding these teach- 
ings in reading the gospels and no one who 
listens can fail to realize that the ministry of 
the church of Christ of the present day con- 
siders these great transforming thoughts abso- 
lutely essential to the regeneration of the 
world. 

Modern scholarship with its greater means 
for accuracy and its flood of light from his- 
torical research finds Jesus emphasizing be- 
yond a question as the heart and soul of his 
gospel, the need of the spirit of brotherhood. 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 53 

We find this great divine truth almost snowed 
under by the philosophical discussions and 
creedal disputes of church history. We take 
to-day the two great commandments of Jesus, 
which are as plain as daylight can make them, 
as the foundation stones of a Christian world 
rather than the Nicene Creed. We are trying 
with all our energy to recover the ground lost 
for brotherhood in the quarrelsome days of 
church heresies. We regard Jesus, the Great 
Teacher, as sounding forth an ethical message, 
rather than a metaphysical one. He is the 
divine messenger of this good news of broth- 
erhood which is the great and apparently only 
saving idea for the progress of humanity at 
present. 

The Christian Church is beginning to feel 
that we have wasted time in our quibblings 
and in large measure missed the heart of the 
whole matter, the meaning of the life and 
death of Christ, because so many church mem- 
bers in good and regular standing have lost 
sight of what Jesus came here to do. And we 



54 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

must get back to Jesus' feet and become as 
little children, as He said we must, if we are 
to be his true followers. 

This is not only the saving gospel for hu- 
manity, but the only salvation of the church 
itself, which in many spots has seemed to let 
its vitality ooze out. Not separation but co- 
operation is the keynote struck to-day. This 
is the message, the good news, that the present- 
day prophets preach, and that the people 
want. And great good news it is, this evangel 
of Christian brotherhood which the spirit- 
ually minded have been able to hear and are 
trying to proclaim, finding concrete expres- 
sion in a League of Nations, in the Inter- 
Church World Movement, and federations of 
many sorts. If this divine gospel of brother- 
hood could be set to work by labor and capital 
we all believe that much of the injustice, un- 
rest and distress of our time would be relieved. 
Most intelligent people, whether they are 
church members or not, have come to feel that 
this is the only remedy that will work a cure. 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 55 

So far has this gospel of Jesus progressed that 
it has thus, like an invisible gas, escaped its 
hard and fast bounds and crept into unecclesi- 
astical corners, breaking out now and then 
even in such worldly and untheological or- 
gans as newspapers and popular periodicals. 
And yet many think it so ideal that it is not 
practical and, sad to say, some good church 
members are not yet ready to shift their em- 
phasis from the Nicene Creed to the brother- 
hood of man. It is no wonder that the major- 
ity of our young people are puzzled at the use 
of the word evangelical in the old theological 
sense. That kind of terminology seems to 
have been stranded in a lagoon; the currents 
of life are passing it by very swiftly. Real 
Christianity cannot be dammed up like that, 
its powerful current will overflow the bounds 
and form a new course, whether we like it or 
not. 

This is not saying that there may not be pro- 
found truths underneath some of those old 
metaphysical discussions. There doubtless 



56 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

were, or they would not have gripped the 
thought of man as they did. But a new 
phraseology is needed for a new day, and 
whether we will it or not, it is taking place. 
It is like the earth which belongs to the Lord, 
the earth and the fulness thereof. Travel in 
a new country and you see vast, unbroken 
stretches of prairie land, but soon it is broken 
up into farms. The underlying earth remains 
the same but not our use of it. It is the source 
of all our food and always has been, but our 
method of producing the food changes. This 
affects the whole landscape as we look out on 
it. A photographer in the air, as he flies from 
sea to sea, may look down one day on a great 
expanse of ranch land with bunches of cattle 
grazing here and there. But to-morrow he 
may see a patchwork of green fields, some 
growing corn, some wheat, and some garden 
stuff for a neighboring city, where it used to 
be prairie like the first picture. What has 
happened? The soil remains the same and 
we scratch only the surface of it at best, but 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 57 

we do not utilize it in just the same way or use 
the same language as we did in describing it. 
Agriculturists are now finding out how to 
treat the soil scientifically. 

Those laws have always existed, God's laws 
of soils. But the crops of boys trained in mod- 
ern agricultural schools are more fruitful for 
these days than farms run on the old lines. 
Jesus evidently understood the spiritual soils 
He had to work with. He certainly was not 
the Divine Sower who went forth to sow, un- 
less He did. The fundamental principles 
were what He based his work upon. Why not 
accept what He emphasized rather than stress 
the interpretations of the church fathers of 
any age? 

Can we, then, find those fundamentals em- 
phasized by Christ? There are certainly two, 
personal loyalty to Himself and to God, for 
He was only God's representative; and a be- 
lief in the brotherhood of man, which is but 
another name for salvation. And if we scan 
our list of evangelical doctrines carefully. 



58 PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

they can all be brought under these heads. 
Under the first would come personal union 
with Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity which 
involves Christ's divinity, belief in the Holy 
Spirit and salvation by faith. Under the sec- 
ond we may place man's need, or in the old 
phraseology, his fall or corruption, Christ's 
atonement and justification, and the manner in 
which that atonement and justification are 
accomplished, or saving grace. 

Now what if the modern mind responds 
better to the underlying thought of the Trin- 
ity, when instead of picturing three thrones 
and three deities in a very anthropomorphic 
manner, the illustration is used of the electric 
current and the central power? We attempt 
to ride on the trolley car but it will not carry 
its load unless the trolley is on the wire and 
that wire is charged with the electric current 
coming from the powerhouse and applied by 
the hand of the engineer. Thus the human 
soul comes in contact with the influence of the 
Holy Spirit, which quickens one's conscience 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 59 

and energizes one's whole life through a 
knowledge of Jesus Christ who is the repre- 
sentative of God, and who can interpret Him 
to mankind. This is a scientific age, an age of 
dynamic power. Such an illustration is much 
more real to the modern mind than Sargent's 
ecclesiastical picture, ^'The Dogma of Re- 
demption," in the Boston Public Library. 

And what if men wish to dwell more upon 
the divinity of Christ than his deity? None 
of us knows much about deity. The nearest 
we can get to it is through divinity. It is only 
if our lives are hallowed in some way by the 
touch of the divine that we come near to God. 
And what if men to-day can define the atone- 
ment best as at-one-ment or having harmony 
with God, and justification by faith as the 
making right of wrong things, for that is its 
literal meaning, by displacing the spirit of hate 
and selfishness with the spirit of love and fel- 
lowship? And what if saving grace is just this 
electric current of Divine Love possessing 
men's hearts and meeting man at the very door 



6o PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 

of his need and his wretchedness? Is such a 
translation of Scriptural truth non-evangeli- 
cal? Is it not simply a more modern trans- 
lation? We have needed new linguistic 
translations throughout the centuries. The 
Vulgate took the place of the Old Latin, the 
King James Version of the Bishops' Bible, 
the Revised Version of the King James, 
and now the Romanists are issuing a trans- 
lation to supersede the Douay Version. 
Why? Because scholarship increases and 
new light is found, and the meaning of 
words changes. Do we not need a new 
translation of our dogmas as well? And what 
if outside the pale of so-called evangelical 
churches should be found many who really 
live in the light of such a gospel : shall we set 
up an artificial distinction or fail to have fel- 
lowship with them in the unity of the spirit, 
in the bond of peace? 

This is a plea for co-operation rather than 
separation, for spiritual relationship with 
God and Christ and man rather than dog- 



PRESENT-DAY CHRISTIANITY 6i 

matic distinctions, for real discipleship and 
loyalty to Jesus' fundamental teachings. For 
these are critical days. The world will go on ; 
there is no question of that. Spiritual forces 
both good and bad, helpful and pernicious, 
will work their works; there is no doubt of 
that. But whether men and women, labor and 
capital, senators and presidents, church mem- 
bers and non-church members, privileged 
students and untrained toilers, lay hold of the 
real saving grace or not is a question fraught 
with much anxiety at the present moment. It 
is worth sacrifice and devotion to accomplish. 
It is a mission as worthy as any crusader's mis- 
sion. There are many of us who love the 
church so much that we want her to take the 
lead. We would sing with John Mason 
Neale : 

Christ is made the sure foundation, 
Christ the head and corner-stone, 

Chosen of the Lord, and precious. 
Binding all the Church in one. 



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